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RP: Do you recall the day that Japan surrendered? Some folks remember that day.
MY: All I know is in mid August I was standing at the gate waiting for the Greyhound bus. I was going to go to Los Angeles to join my father so I could start school in September. I waited, I said goodbye to my friends and everything in the block, and I walked down with my little old suitcase, had my Greyhound bus ticket, and I waited and waited. I was there at nine o'clock in the morning. Then at twelve noon the bus still hadn't arrived. I mean, I was just fit to be tied, I was so mad. But this was mid August. I don't know if it's, the atomic bomb was dropped, or if Japan surrendered. To me, it made no difference what it was. Why didn't they tell me at the gate to go back home? They were all celebrating. So it must've been when Japan surrendered. Did Japan surrender mid August?
RP: Roughly, yeah.
MY: Okay, that's, so it affected me, impacted me. So I walked all the way back home, and somehow they communicated with my father by, I think he more or less guessed, and then, 'cause my uncle did have a telephone. There were no public phones here; I think they had to go all the way down to the administrative office. And so maybe the next day or two days later I got the Greyhound bus and ended up at the bus station. My father picked me up so I could advertise for my schoolgirl job.
RP: Yeah. One of the stories you shared with me yesterday was visiting the block manager's office to read the L.A Times.
MY: Yes, every morning. The Times was delivered to the block office. I don't know if it was that day or it was the next day, and they censored the paper. Sometimes certain things, especially about the war, was clipped out.
RP: The Times?
MY: Yeah, the Times. And because it was, they had, like, wooden clamps on it, you couldn't take it out of the, but I read everything. But I really went there to read the comics.
RP: What was your favorite comic?
MY: It was Brenda Star at that time, and also Flash Gordon. That was my interest. And in the beginning, the catalogs where you could order items were there, Sears and Montgomery Ward.
RP: In the block manager's office?
MY: Yeah.
RP: Interesting.
MY: They delivered the mail to the block manager, and if we had mail we'd just go down and we'd, I think he had it sorted out, we'd just pick up our mail there. But if we wanted to mail anything, there was a post office in the canteen. You see? All army terms, canteen. "We're going to the canteen to see if they have any soda today," or whatever. And we would purchase things there, but it was very, very limited, what they had at the canteen. Rightfully so, because we didn't have refrigerators, and a lot of people didn't have stoves. But whenever special things arrived, I mean, you didn't need any cell phone or anything, everybody in the camp knew that something special, food had arrived in the canteen. We'd all go down like little lemmings to get it. [Laughs]
RP: Try to get there before the ice cream ran out.
MY: Yes.
<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.